AI incident #1671 ·
OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol Agent Reportedly Deleted Most Files in AI Startup Founder's Mac Home Directory
What happened
AI investor Matt Shumer reported that a GPT-5.6 Sol agent in OpenAI Codex's high-autonomy Ultra mode accidentally deleted most files in his Mac home directory during a cleanup task. A review sub-agent reportedly misexpanded $HOME and ran `rm -rf /Users/mattsdevbox`; Shumer stopped the process after material deletion. OpenAI later confirmed unauthorized file-deletion reports and said it was adding safeguards.
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Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Matt Shumer AI agent system deployers
- Alleged developer
- OpenAI Large language model developers AI agent system developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Matt Shumer AI agent system users
AI systems implicated
OpenAI large language modelsOpenAI CodexLLM-integrated code assistantsLarge language modelsGPT-5.6 SolChatbotsAI agent systems
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
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Related incidents on the AI Incident Database
Linked by AIID editors or by its text-similarity model.